


The Unknowable Beast

by bionically



Series: Charlie x Luna [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bionically/pseuds/bionically
Summary: Something about Luna Lovegood just throws Charlie Weasley off balance.He might just have to get to know her better.#TeamAphrodite #lf2020
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Charlie Weasley
Series: Charlie x Luna [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644802
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35
Collections: Love Fest 2020





	The Unknowable Beast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunamionny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunamionny/gifts).



> Gifted to Lunamionny for her lovely, lovely aesthetic on my other Charluna drabble.
> 
> unbeta'd

Dragons had a tendency to bring out the dormant aspects of your personality to the surface. 

Charlie Weasley was never more aware of this than when he watched Luna Lovegood on his reserve.

For example, if someone were _slightly_ faint-hearted to begin with, he ran away at the first sight of a dragon, and if that person were a thrill-seeker, he would wave his hands and whoop like a maniac. 

Luna Lovegood did neither of those things.

She stood there in the middle of the ravine, with dragons swooping overhead around her, like something— _otherworldly_ , as though she were a faerie and not a human, unafraid and uncowering at the show of beastly might and flight . 

She stood quiet and unwavering, and not a single one of the dragons even spat next to her. 

He couldn’t help but contrast her with all the girls he had known. He had known a fair number of fearless women. Tonks, rest her soul, was at the top of that list. She would dangle off her broom over the Astronomy Tower to play tricks on someone inside. Absolutely fearless she was, and a whole barrel of laughs, and yet Tonks couldn’t help ducking and cursing when a grown dragon flew overhead.

“Merlin’s balls, Charlie, they’re even more terrifying than Dementors!” she had shouted up at him the first time he let her into the pen. “Don’t you dare leave me in here by myself!”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Charlie said, flashing her a cheeky grin. That exact thought _had_ occurred to him, but only for a few seconds—just long enough to scare Tonks, who was so good at playing pranks on others.

The thought struck him just now that he had never before met someone so utterly unafraid of the unexpected as Luna Lovegood. She kept absolutely still, standing where dozens of flying dragons could engulf her in a lethal flame at any moment. A few paces behind her, he could see the happiness and awe on her face—the exact same expression that he'd had the first time he was brought here.

Dragonology was a predominantly male career choice, mainly because it catered to the danger-seeking tendencies in young boys after leaving school; dreaming of exciting, risky exploits. In actuality, it was unglamorous work, with frequent scrapes and bruises and, Charlie had heard on more than one occasion, marked with the incredibly acrid and incomparably disgusting smell of dragon feces. Not to mention the unsightly business of scale rot.

Watching the peaceful expression on Luna’s face now, however, Charlie was struck by the fact that she _truly wasn’t afraid_ , or even repulsed. She couldn’t be… _simple_ , could she? That was the only other explanation he could come up with.

When she turned to him, the only thing she said was, “We’re never happier than when we’ve experienced the limits of our mortality. I understand why you love it so much here.”

He never thought that someone could summarise all that he felt about his line of work so succinctly, and that realisation stopped him in his tracks completely.

That was probably the reason Charlie wasn’t prepared when a spiked dragon tail whipped through the air and smashed into the ground not five metres from where Luna stood. Charlie woke from his stupor and dove to shove her behind him, immediately casting a shield over the two of them.

Instead of screeching with fright—and he had known one or two girls who’d use the opportunity to sidle into his arms—Luna stood on tip-toes and peered up over his arm at the Horntail. Her silver eyes were crinkled up at the outer edges. “Oh, that’s alright; I’m not hurt. I think he’s just a little clumsy. It must be from the excess wrackspurts all over his head.”

Charlie wasn’t listening at the moment, but later he reflected on her words. The “clumsy” dragon was Mogfish, and he _was_ extraordinarily clumsy. He often flew directly into trees and singed buildings instead of his food. Charlie couldn’t help but feel a surge of admiration for this slip of a girl who was able keep calm after almost being smashed into pieces. 

But what on earth were wrackspurts?

* * *

Was it silly of him to be so aware of someone so young? Charlie was starting to mildly feel like a pervert. She was his baby sister’s age, but her height and build made her look even younger. He could probably fit her inside one of his duffel bags and carry her around.

She stayed for one more day after Ginny left. Charlie, sick of wondering about his own intentions, took her to a nearby village for dinner and a show. 

Before Ginny left, she'd pointed a finger at him and warned him. “Don’t make fun of her, Charlie.”

He spread his hands and gave her his most innocent look. “Would I?”

Ginny narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips. “I’ve lived with the lot of you my whole life. I know how mean you all can be about women. I mean it. I will bat-bogey hex you for the rest of your single life if you hurt her. _The rest of your life._ ”

Gin was being uncommonly serious. Charlie relented. “I won’t hurt her, Gin. I can be charming.”  
  


Ginny didn’t look any happier with that. “Not too charming either, mind. She needs someone else in her life. Someone not—jaded like you. Someone who’s—I don’t know, someone who’s less brawny, maybe.” 

Charlie had scoffed then. “So now I can’t talk to your friend because I’m too muscular? That’s a first.”

Ginny looked perplexed and annoyed by her own inability to put her thoughts into succinct words. “You know what I mean!”

The thing was, Charlie _did_ know what she meant. Luna was someone made of dreams and clouds, someone who was somehow shielded from the ugliness of life even as she swam in it. Like the dragonfire blossom that sprung up after a spate of sulfuric ash buried the ground and everything living on it.

He didn’t think he wanted to see the day someone wrecked that strange mixture of wisdom and innocence. He was sure that it’d be the augur of worse things to come.

* * *

Something about Luna Lovegood made Charlie Weasley feel at times inadequate and off-balance. 

She was mostly a restful sort of girl; the kind that belonged more in a woodland setting filled with water sprites than in a loud pub filled with the coarse chatter of gregarious witches and wizards. There was always something so dreamy about her, as though she were lost in a world of her own; somewhere beautiful and happy and forbidden to most people. She was, he was coming to realise in the short time she had been in Romania, someone out of the ordinary.

On the other hand, Charlie was confronted with the irritating fact that pure innocence was a little endearing and a lot maddening. He was never more aware of this than after spending the entire evening with Luna Lovegood. 

It wasn’t a date, he had told himself. He’d had his share of women who chased dragon tamers; the excitable ones who followed the dragon tournaments around the world. Like Ginny had said, he was much too old and jaded for someone like Luna. He wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea about his intentions because, most likely, he had none. He had been doing his own thing for a good portion of his life now, and he preferred it like that. As one and the next of his brothers got married, all Charlie did was to show up at the wedding and then smirk in delight as, six months down the line, the drudgery of everyday life started to seep through the rose glasses of lovesickness.

The perpetual bachelor, Ginny had called him. The only one of his siblings who would broach the subject, she had asked, “Don’t you ever get lonely, Charlie?”

He had gestured at the majesty of the mountains behind them, mountains that could look purple and wet with fog, or green and verdant with vegetation, and scoffed. “Are you kidding, Gin? Look at this place. Why would I get lonely when I get to tame the most unknowable beast in the world?”  
  


After the dinner and the show, which consisted of watching the _Blajini_ reenact a famous battle, Charlie and Luna returned to the reserve. He thought it had gone fairly well. In the past, he had been shocked by how forward women were. He wondered where Luna Lovegood would fall on this scale, considering her predilection for wild animals and those who tamed them. Not that this was that kind of a date. Not at all.

She turned to him with a smile that he couldn’t help but return. Her voice was soft and songlike as she said, “I’m really glad I got to know you better, Charlie. It's really nice to have a big brother. Ginny’s very lucky to have so many who care for her.”

It threw him off-kilter. 

The unspoken meaning in her words indicated that she now considered _him_ in a brotherly light. It flummoxed him. Had he, like some of his friends thought, been spending too much time on the reserve? Had he somehow lost his touch?

_Like a brother. Like a brother._ The words seemed to echo in his mind even as he watched her Portkey away the next day. She waved at him cheerily, with no sign that she had spent a restless night wondering if she had just been neutered in some way.

He smiled back with only half her enthusiasm.

One thought reverberated through his brain: Here was one more unknowable beast he had to get to know better.


End file.
